Moutter taking a back seat over Telecom results

Gen-i chief executive Chris Quin will lead the presentation of Telecom's full-year result, rather than new Telecom boss Simon Moutter. Photo / Supplied

New Telecom boss Simon Moutter will take a back seat this Friday as New Zealand's largest-listed company announces its full-year result, with Gen-i chief executive Chris Quin leading the presentation.

While Moutter will attend Friday's announcement he will not reveal his vision or strategy for the company.

Quin, who heads Telecom's Gen-i division, told the Herald yesterday he would be fronting most of the results presentation.

Quin was Telecom's acting chief executive between Paul Reynolds' departure in June and Moutter's start at the company earlier this month.

While Telecom's split with Chorus last November still complicates the numbers, Craigs Investment Partners' Arie Dekker said the company's net profit for the six-months to June 30 should be around $190 million.

"Focusing on the second-half result will give a good run-rate for the full-year," Dekker said.

Dekker said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation should be around $560 million for the six months to June 30.

IDC analyst Glen Saunders said he was waiting to see how Telecom was doing in the mobile market and expected the company had lost "a chunk" of its low-value customers to 2degrees.

At its last briefing in February, Telecom said it had about a 37 per cent market share.

Saunders believed Telecom's attempts to move customers from its CDMA network to the newer XT infrastructure during the first half of this year did not go to plan.

Telecom shut down its CDMA network at the end of last month.

"Our gut feel is perhaps the CDMA migration hasn't gone as well as they [Telecom] would have liked," Saunders said.

The results will also shed some light on the performance of Telecom's youth-focused brand, Skinny.

Telecom has previously refused to reveal how many customers Skinny has picked up since its launch at the start of this year.

The company has not disclosed what the project has cost, which Saunders predicted sat in the "millions".

"The numbers will tell how that's going but it will take a long time before they get a return on investment," he said.

With Moutter at the helm and the departure of Telecom retail division boss Alan Gourdie this October, Saunders said it will interesting to see the tack the company takes.

"Simon's quite a different person from Paul Reynolds ... it will be really interesting to see whether there's going to be a change in the flavour of their strategy in terms of the way Telecom approaches the market."